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Where the books were written, set, sold, printed and buried: from the Globe to the graves, the bookshops to the presses.
This season's book talks, festivals and exhibitions are in What's On: Books & writers
A crooked sixteenth-century shop that borrowed Dickens's title and has kept it ever since.
In the storyFree
The building on Portsmouth Street dates from the 1560s, built of old ships' timbers by tradition, and is one of the oldest shops in London; the sign naming it The Old Curiosity Shop was painted on after the novel of 1841 made the phrase famous, by a dealer who knew a good thing. Dickens's own shop was somewhere near Leicester Square and is long gone, but this leaning survivor with its overhanging upper floor is what everyone pictures, and it outlasted the Blitz and the office blocks that grew up around it.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.